I for one do not want to get into a voting match with AA TWU. They support their union and do not give any other workers coming in to their group any senority. I'll agree that if this happens and we are to lose to the TWU, kiss or senority goodbye!! This is still an issue over at SWA and ATran. The TWU does not want to give any senority. They believe since they are 5 times greater they should have a 5 to 1 senority ratio.
Each time there has been a battle of TWU vs IAM, the IAM members came out on the short side of the stick, and plenty of it.
At AA: IAM members get so screwed that the US government had to create a law to try to even the playing field. Who would have ever thought that Roach would screw his own and sign off on scope for a promise from AMR Boss Carty? Food for thought: And then Roach gets promoted after his management deal at AMR in bankruptcy. Then he proceeds to lose 80,000 members in the union and gets promoted to S/T last month. You know what that means? The boys at the INTL don't give a rats arse about the members, that's what that means.
At US/AW: The IAM, under the direction of Roach/Canale agrees to pay the TWU $500,000 over 4 years, and agrees to dump US east profit sharing into the hands of former TWU members [nothing against the former westies], who were still under their old contract, in return, the TWU walked away.
At WN/Airtran: Remains to be seen.
At US/AMR: remains to be seen. But we can't exchange any profit sharing this time since the IAM already dumped that out of our contract. What are they going to deal away this time?? IAM members have been burnt to crisp repeatedly with the TWU/IAM matchup and we can't afford to sit on the sidelines and support folks who don't have any seniority on the line and have proven not to give a rats arse about LCC seniority.
The TWU has historically included 'sacredity' clauses in their contracts. At AA or WN, they have sacredity clauses that say that their members can't be adversely affected in a merger. no IAM contracts have incorporated such protections for their members but that is something that is NUMBER 1 for my team, i.e., incorporating a sacredity clause for our members to protect them and their families during mergers. It's just not right to go through mergers wondering if your seniority is going to be recognized. Not if you are a union member. In this industry, the number 1 job of any union should be to protect your job and the seniority that comes with it, while maintaining or enhancing the wage/benefits. Our union screwed the hell out of us on that by doing the exact opposite and hammering its members. Instead of negotiating seniority protections, our union leadership sided with management and 'hammered' all workers who were exposed to being laid off. Amazingly, the UA IAM Leaders were screwing your seniority even without mergers. If someone had 30 years of seniority but then got laid off for more than 60 days, and was recalled, the person went 'day one' for pay. And I could go on with how the IAM has completely raped its members. That said, whether it's the IAM, TWU, IBT, all of them are in sore need of getting the hell out from under management's desk. We have the IAM so we go with it and try to make it better. But we have to smash down the paradigm that Canale and Delaney use. There is a fault in that paradigm so it won't matter who the President of the District is unless we first smash down the representational model that both of them support. The platform my team is proposing to the membership is smashing down the whole paradigm that has made the US and UA members the least in the industry and the least on their particular properties. There is absolutely no reason why US rampers need to be the only group without profit sharing. There is no reason why they need to fall farther and farther behind the upstairs. And I got news for you, it's about damn time we get a leader who also realizes that rampers need to share in commissions also, just like customer service folks do. Those bag fees need to be shared. Those priority bag benefits to customers that puts their bags on the belt first, need to come with additional compensation/commission to rampers. Commissions shouldn't only be paid to customer service folks. We have alot of straigtening up to do but most of us are still too young to retire but too old to find another job so we have time to clean up this big mess that the UA 141 Presidents created since they don't give a rat's arse about you.
regards,
Tim Nelson